They want what they want. They have desires to be boys, girls, rough, quiet, loud, masculine, feminine, etc. all without (and often in spite of) being influenced to the contrary.
Advertising just showcases things that they already mostly want. It doesn't completely change their desires.
What children want is influenced by what their peers want, and what peer groups find desirable is influenced, among other things, by merchandising-related children's TV programming.
When I was young, there was far less difference between boys toys and girls toys than there is now.
Girls want to care for things, communicate, etc, and boys want to blow stuff up or build stuff. It's preprogrammed into our DNA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children#Reality
http://planetark.org/wen/53118
> "When carers leave the room, the girl jumps at the door and barks," the police said.
An extreme example I admit, but if it's preprogrammed into out DNA shouldn't she be "caring for things" instead?
Wait until you've had a son and daughter, then come back and report what massive differences in behaviour there was right from birth.
And they usually dress them differently (girls get girl clothes, boys get boy clothes).
http://www.newsweek.com/why-parents-may-cause-gender-differe...
It's so stupid, because the arguments are always structured as, "society forces behaviour on girls and boys", when it seems pretty obvious it's more of a feedback loop. Tendencies trend in a gender, that "informs" society, which then reinforces them, and so on.
In the hopes that you are not a conspiracy theorist you must assume marketers haven't done any research about what girls innately like and are purely marketing products based on what you might call 'traditional' views.
It's much easier to market sugar than it is to market broccoli so that's what most foods marketed today contain. I don't believe we like sugarry treats because of marketing. I believe marketers market flavours of sugar because sugar is what we're wired to like first and foremost.
"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." - Earnshaw's Infants' Department
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-St... - extract from this:
'For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”'
Do you have any articles about toy function being socially conditioned into genders? Girls toys mostly consist of 'nurturer' stereotypes. For example tea sets, doll houses or baby dolls with baby cribs.
This makes the assumption that there is indeed something innate about purchasing. Short of credible psychological research, most market research relies on past sales data, past products, as well as a survey of existing products. Marketing, then, forms a self-stabilising and self-perpetuated system that makes future decisions based on its own past decisions.
This is remarkably close to Adorno and Horkheimer's view of the cultural industry: The underlying thesis here is that the culture industry preselects cultural production. Within the constraints of that preselection, the customer is free to choose whatever he or she fancies. This in turn leads to a culture industry that can claim that every subsequent selection is indeed strictly based on past consumer behaviour. After a while, this claim can even be truthful, if this initial preselection is ignored. That is why the Dialectic of Enlightenment calls this a mass deception.
Perhaps the main desire being served is to be able to announce "I am a boy" or "I am a girl".
Also note that there aren't many pink first person shooters.